How do YOU define Zionist?

Which of the examples that you give is your definition, @JLeslie? This is a controversial topic you have raised, it’s appropriate for you to let us know.

My understanding is that Zionism is really more political than religious. It is someone that believes Israel has a right to exist as its own independent state. To me, those that are anti-Zionists just want genocide on all Israelis.

Zionism is support for Israel as a Jewish state in the Middle East. Anti-Zionism is opposition to the existence of this ethno-state. I agree it is more political than religious.

@canidmajor It doesn’t matter what I think, but I previously always used it to mean a movement that Jews were there first and should be able to live there and have a Jewish state. I don’t think my definition is right or wrong, I am saying that was how I defined it. I never identified as a zionist. I feel Israel has a right to exist because of decisions made that drew a lot of borders in the ME. If we believe everyone gets to go back or recoup land many generations back, then we need to give most of the US to the Native Americans.

I was just curious how other people use it for communication purposes.

I’ve heard Palestinians say they aren’t antisemitic they are anti-zionist, and they follow that by saying that most of the Jews aren’t from Israel and should go back from where they came from. Most Jews in Israel are Israeli born, almost 80%. Many Jews in Israel are 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation Israeli Jews. Plus, the Jewish people are from those lands and then spread out (diaspora) over history.

Meanwhile, you didn’t answer the Q. So whatever. Why would you be reluctant to answer? It’s just a definition.

Basically, Zionists believe that the area now known as Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jews and they have the right to live there, by any means necessary. Typical nationalistic bullshit.

Oh, ffs, @JLeslie I was just curious what you thought. I am not “reluctant to answer”, it’s not a word I heard that much until recently, even though I live in an area that has a fairly extensive Jewish population. I don’t have an answer. Your defensiveness is silly.

I do appreciate that your answer to my original question was comprehensive and cogent. Thank you.

Before the founding of the state of Israel it was said that to be a Zionist was to be a Jew. Now I wonder if Zionism is even compatible with Judaism.

Zionism today appears to have little to do with Jewish tradition but is more of a racist or a colonial movement.

I don’t. I don’t remember ever uttering the word.

I don’t know that much about Middle Eastern politics. I knew about the history of Israel but that’s about the extent of it. When I was little, in the early 1970s, and when I was growing up, there was a lot on the news about the Middle East but to me, it’s kind of all a blur.

@canidmajor Ok, so if I understand correctly you don’t use the word and didn’t have a definition for it.

It’s nationalism with Jewish aesthetics.

As with any nationalism I’ve ever encountered, it’s an utterly pathetic embarrassment to the identity it purports to represent.

I consider the association of Zionism with being Jewish a contemptible insult to Jewish people.

I would like to emphasise that Israel should not exist (no state has a “right to exist” and I am anti-statist as it is). Colonial settler states above all have absolutely no legitimacy and are by definition racist, exclusionary, and based on an unjustifiable might makes right “morality”.

My personal experience with all self-styled and self-identified Zionists has only ever been completely negative. It’s a relatively small sample, but they’ve all been intellectually dishonest, arrogant, and often just deranged and hysterical.

I’ve heard a lot about how Zionists are evil and Jews are alright. How do you tell one from the other in Israel just by looking? I’ve heard Hamas is fighting only against the Zionists. Yet there are many civilians that have paid the price…Hamas had no problem killing them or taking them hostage. How many of the hostages are Zionists?

I support Israel’s continued existence, though I often disagree with policy decisions.

I (check the dictionary to make sure I’m not wrong, and then) define Zionist as (someone) supporting Israel existing as a Jewish state where it currently is (and not being attacked). Because, that’s what the word seems to mean.

I almost never use the term.

When I see/hear someone using the term, I suspect that they either may not know what it means, and/or that they have some agenda for using the term. In particularly, I think some people attempt to use it as a way to try to imply that there is a disproportionately strong and/or insidious faction in favor of supporting Israel in ways that go far beyond it’s existence and defense.

In particular, people who are negative towards Israel and/or Jews, may use the term to label and attempt to stigmatize/other and/or discourage any support for Israel. So I look out for that when I see/hear the term used.

Thanks!

Just looking at @Demosthenes’ and @tinyfaery’s answer in particular, those seem very different to me and what I was starting to sense as I have heard people throwing around the word lately.

Admittedly, I primarily use it as a term for Jewish people who are more hard-core religious, and more extreme in their views on Israeli interests.

I don’t like using the term “Jew.”
It has a negative stigma, to me, as an ethnic slur. Although it is not the definition.
So. I occasionally use the term Zionist, as a different way of saying “Jew.”

I am constantly trying to be sensitive to the pronouns people desire, and often just make it worse.

I don’t consider it a derogatory term. I have never spoken in a malicious way about Jewish people.
I have issues with the Israeli government, specifically Netanyahu and his cohorts.
Otherwise. I have no problems with any ethnic group.

I never had great education growing up in the south, so most of my vocabulary is based on context, or words I have only read but never heard.
My “self-education,” does have flaws.
Hopefully, by the end of this thread, I’ll have a better understanding.

@MrGrimm888 There are actually some very religious ultra orthodox Jews who don’t support the state of Israel. They believe Israel should not be established until after the messiah comes or something like that. Some sort of religious interpretation of something. I don’t know much about it. I don’t know how big the group is. You would be right that most Orthodox Jews support Israel, but of course like everything there are exceptions.

^Trump is supposed to be the messiah, right?
That’s what Christian televangelists say.

GA’s for everyone. Thank you. I will continue not to use the word very much, it is too easily misunderstood and defined many ways. I still don’t think one definition is more right than another, it’s just how these things go, language and communication is difficult.

^Yeah. I hadn’t realized that I had been throwing it around too.

I guess I wanted to separate Jewish people who are just Jewish, from the people who are more hardliners.